[Vision2020] The States Get a Poor Report Card

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>


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March 19, 2012
The States Get a Poor Report Card

State governments have long been accused of backroom dealing, cozy
relationships with moneyed lobbyists, and disconnection from ordinary
citizens. A new study suggests those accusations barely scratch the
surface.

The study, issued Monday by a consortium led by the Center for Public
Integrity<http://www.stateintegrity.org/state_integrity_invesitgation_overview_story>,
a nonpartisan watchdog group, found that most states shy away from public
scrutiny, fail to enact or enforce ethics laws, and allow corporations and
the wealthy a dominant voice in elections and policy decisions. The study
gave virtually every state a mediocre to poor grade on a wide range of
government conduct, including ethics enforcement, transparency, auditing
and campaign finance reform. No state got an A; five received B’s, and the
rest grades of C, D or F.

For all the reform talk by many governors and state lawmakers, very little
has really changed in most capitals over the decades. Budgeting is still
done behind closed doors, and spending decisions are revealed to the public
at the last minute. Ethics panels do not bother to meet, or never enforce
the conflict-of-interest laws that are on the books. Lobbyists have free
access to elected officials, plying them with gifts or big campaign
contributions. Open-records acts are shot through with loopholes.

And yet all the Republican presidential candidates think it would be a good
idea to hand some of Washington’s most important programs to state
governments, which so often combine corruptibility with incompetence. In a
speech on Monday, Mitt Romney said he would dump onto the states most
federal anti-poverty programs, including Medicaid, food stamps and housing
assistance, because states know best what their local needs are.

States, however, generally have a poor record of taking care of their
neediest citizens, and could not be relied on to maintain lifeline programs
like food stamps if Washington just wrote them checks and stopped paying
attention. In many states, newspapers and broadcasters have cut their
statehouse coverage, reducing scrutiny of government’s effectiveness and
integrity.

The new study shows that several of the states doing the best
anti-corruption work had to endure years of scandal to get there. The state
with the best grade (B+) was New
Jersey<http://www.stateintegrity.org/new_jersey>,
which may be surprising considering its reputation for cronyism and
payoffs. In 2005, however, after years of embarrassing scandals, the state
passed some of the toughest ethics laws in the country. Lobbyist gifts are
prohibited, state contractors cannot give to campaigns, ethics training is
mandatory for state employees and an ethics board has real power to enforce
the laws.

New Jersey still has problems, including lax financial disclosure laws and
no ban on lawmakers’ holding two public jobs, but it is doing much better
than New York <http://www.stateintegrity.org/new_york>, which got a D.
There is little enforcement in Albany of campaign finance limits, and the
final budget process is done in secret. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new ethics
commission is filled with many loyal to him and the Legislature and is
still untested.

At the bottom of the heap was Georgia, which came in last for not enforcing
what ethics laws it has on the books. The study noted that 650 state
employees accepted gifts from vendors in recent years, clearly violating
ethics laws, but no one was punished. Seven other states also receiving F’s
were hardly better.

The report shows that most statehouses can barely be trusted to maintain
the rudiments of good government. Without deep reforms, they certainly
should not be asked to handle more federal programs on which millions rely.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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